November 11, 2011

After a pleasant weekend bike ride with W-, I thought I’d get back into the habit of biking to work.

I’d stopped in August because I didn’t want to risk damaging my new laptop. During a bumpy trip to the office, W’s previous laptop had bounced unnoticed out of his panniers and onto the road, where several passing trucks flattened it into a pancake. Fortunately, it was a work laptop, so replacement wasn’t difficult. If I damaged my spiffy new souped-up laptop, though, I’d probably regret it a bit. (Yes, stuff is stuff, but it’s okay to be cautious.) So I commuted via subway, wheeling along a small suitcase with my personal laptop and my work laptop.

The small suitcase’s wheels finally gave out, and I switched to bringing a backpack. It was tough with two computers, but fortunately I received a much-anticipated hardware upgrade at work. Because my new work laptop could handle running my development virtual machines and the programs we needed for work, I started leaving my personal laptop at home. This meant that I could bike into work if I wanted to.

I biked to work once. The next day, up much earlier than sunrise, I thought about whether I should just give in to the idea of getting a public transit pass instead of trying to tough it out and bike for as long as possible in November.

Biking: Exercise; ease of doing errands; will still prefer to take transit when rainy or snowy

Public transit pass (Metropass): $121

Public transit tokens: 40 tokens at $2.50 = $100, plus extra tokens if I need to go to the client site and the office on the same day.

Because a Metropass was not much more expensive than paying for public transit tokens, using the pass is more convenient than juggling tokens, I decided to go for a pass. Work covers the expense, but even if I were paying for it myself, I’d probably still make the same decision. With the transit tax credit of 15.25%, the after-tax cost comes out to around the same as buying tokens for weekday travel, and weekend travel would be a bonus.

I’m going to take the subway this month, although I might still bike if the weekends are pleasant. I’ll use the time to listen to podcasts like the Psych Files (behavioural psychology = hacking your brain) or to draft posts. Maybe I might even pick up a few more books for my Kindle. We’ll see. =)

sachac M-x customize-variable, or you can look for org-modules in my config at http://sachachua.com/dotemacs to see how I do it with (setq org-modules ...) and (org-load-modules-maybe... – Org-mode and habits